


My Skin

by ificecanburn



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Angst, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 07:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8964622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ificecanburn/pseuds/ificecanburn
Summary: AU where the notes to flame alchemy weren't just tattooed on Riza's back, but on her whole body.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Tattoo AU](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/250201) by The Flame and the Hawks Eye. 



> This is a continuation of The-Flame-And-The-Hawks-Eye's short AU on Tumblr.
> 
> The first part is from The Flame and the Hawks Eye, and after that is my continuation. 
> 
> Basically if you like this go look at their work. 
> 
> Some inspiration also came from Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, and the song My Skin by Natalie Merchant.

 

_She didn’t know how long she stood at the water basin staring at the runes she had hidden so well beneath her makeup and clothes. Runes and dead words engraved onto her skin that no other soul aside from her father had seen. Riza wrung out another sponge and scrubbed over another patch of her arm, knowing full well that the ink there had already been completely exposed._

  
_She was stalling, she knew; unable to bear having to do it all over again. Riza had to tell herself over and over again that it wasn’t because she was vain. That it was more or less natural for a young woman to feel the way she felt at that moment._

  
_She ran her fingers through her hair, parting it enough to see the red ink that laid beneath it. It had just gotten thick enough to hide the marks too…_  
_Roy had been surprised when he returned. He had even raised a hand to drag his fingers through it, only stopping when she pulled away from his touch. She said she was trying something new and the warm smile he gave her in return when he told her she looked beautiful made her heart ache. Would he still say the same when it was all gone again? When he saw the bright red markings that marred her arms and legs and back?_

  
_A tap on the door broke her from her trance and she heard Roy ask from the other side if she was okay. Riza braced her hands against the sink and looked at the puffy-eyed, red faced reflection that stared back. She lied again, keeping her voice low to prevent her from breaking again._

  
_She would be okay, she told herself as she continued to stare at the bright red ink. Her eyes never left them as she grabbed around blindly until she found what she needed._  
_She took a deep, steady breath, reminding herself of his promise to her. That what she was doing would be for the advancement of their country, and for the protection of its people. Exposing what she had hidden for so long, what she had felt had been a heavy burden, would finally give her the freedom from her father she so desperately craved. She swallowed back her tears and lifted the blade to her forehead, and pushed it through her hair._

 

  
**\- - -**

  
At fourteen years old, Riza found herself questioning whether or not she was real.

  
She wasn't going crazy, she told herself repeatedly. It wasn't all the time, she reasoned, and it wasn't a serious question, not really. She was real. She was there. She pinched herself to feel pain, opened her mouth to speak words to the silence just to hear them. Self-consciousness and fear of the question itself stopped her from talking to herself- to no one- but she felt her vocal chords strain with disuse, and that was enough.

  
The question came at two AM, three-thirteen, five-past-one, any time past midnight when she could feel the world asleep and the Hawkeye house became oppressive, its air muggy and choking. Riza could feel her father's presence in that house. He was up, always up, always working. The question came after days of feeling but not seeing him, of not using her voice, when it seemed not a single living creature came within a mile of them. It was on nights like that when Riza felt like something that just came with the house.

  
His voice cracked through the air, and though she barely moved the bitter, metallic taste of fear arose in her mouth, her nerves jolting, startled. He needed her to do something for him.

  
**\- - -**

  
_"All happy families are alike. All unhappy families are unhappy in their own way."_

  
The Hawkeye family had a sickness, Riza decided, years later. Something cloying and consuming that settled deep inside and made its home. In her mother, it had manifested itself in her stomach, eating and clawing and spreading until she relented. It consumed her first. In her father, it rooted in his mind, driving him to frenzied, fevered heights. It took him next. Riza left the house where it lived and never looked back, but sometimes she thought she could feel it breathing down her neck, daring her to look behind.

 

She let him do it. At moments it felt that, in letting him, she was really doing it to him. She allowed him to descend to such manic heights. He marred her skin, but she had let him. A small piece of control, if she looked at it in the right way. If she squinted hard.

  
The motorised tattoo pen hadn't been gentle. Her father's hands were inexperienced, and he often went over the same part several times, like scribbling a pen on paper to wring the ink out, to make it work. The ink in question was the colour of dried blood, a powder he crushed himself and mixed while giving her a moments respite from the pain. The writing and runes at times looked childish, etched to be legible, encoded to be unintelligible.

  
He left her face and hands bare. He didn't care about how she looked to herself, how she might manage to look at her skin in the mirror, nor did he care about the reactions of future lovers, a prospect discarded by Riza before she had been old enough to want it. But it was important to keep his secrets hidden, and so while Riza took to using makeup for extra concealment as an adult, the markings were made to swarm beneath clothes.

  
Sometimes Riza wanted nothing more than to be clean. Sometimes she could feel the words and markings writhing on her skin like a layer she couldn't remove. She would scrub herself with scalding hot water until she was raw, but the claustrophobic feeling wouldn't leave. She felt, then, she understood the cleansing power of fire.

Riza bled a lot after her sessions with the tattoo gun. Her father was rough and left her skin raw. She tended to herself gently and ritualistically, dabbing with alcohol soaked cotton balls and finding small release in the sting. She took care of herself as she imagined a mother might, locked in the bathroom with towels thrown over the mirrors.  
In time she healed. Soon her hair had grown long enough to hide the marks made on her scalp. She could leave the house again, but found fresh pain in doing so, reality slapping her in the face as soon as she stepped outside the confines of the Hawkeye house. Inside the house, with its close, hot air casting its spell, there was almost reason in her fathers actions, a reason for the words on her skin. Out in the cold, clear light of day, she was just a disfigured little girl. Riza endured.

  
When people called her pretty, she thought of the marks marring her, threatening to creep out at her sleeve or the collar of her shirt. When men looked at her she pictured their faces if they saw the reality in place of what they imagined.

  
**\- - -**

  
"Riza?"

  
Brought back to the now, Riza took a breath, gripping the sink. The cotton balls that had littered this bathroom floor, stained brown with antiseptic and reddish with her blood, faded from her minds eye. The mirror was no longer covered, and she saw her own red raw eyes staring back at her. She was naked, but not, never truly, always covered. Her hair floated in the dirty sink water, the faucets slow drip the only sound, echoing clearly against the sterile tile.

  
She opened her mouth to reply, but the words didn't come. Her voice had given out before she had, she could be proud of that at least. As Riza turned her hand to the door knob doubt rose, thick and acidic as bile, in the back of her throat. The house itself seemed to be pressing in on her, silently screaming her fathers diatribe of secrecy and concealment. It was not too late to turn back. It was not too late to give in and let the house consume her, as it finally had her father, who now lay buried in its soil, feeding its roots.

  
Riza was at once fearful of Roy seeing the truth, and impatient for it. The anticipation she felt for the thrill of inflicting his reaction on herself scared her. She felt as though she were standing atop a cliff, feeling the pull to the edge that whispered 'jump'.

  
She could almost feel him fidgeting on the other side of the door. Finally the waiting became too much, enough to overwhelm her fear and hesitancy. Riza opened the door, and watched as horror filled the eyes of this man before her.


End file.
